WOMEN IN COMICS

In addition to being a comic book lover since age 10 (the first one I ever bought with my own money was the graphic novel retelling of Star Wars, 1978), I'm also a highly experienced, multi-award winning writer with a background that includes everything from corporate slogans, TV commercials and promotional pamphlets to lifestyle magazine pieces, celebrity bios, screenplays and hard-core investigative journalism stories. I was also the editor-in-chief of an online news site where my main duties were to proofread and edit stories submitted by seasoned journalists from CNN, The New York Times, The Huffington Post, USA Today and other major newspapers across North America. I'm a damn good writer, and believe I am fully capable of writing a comic book.

With the guidance and support of my comic book brethren, including Jeff Mariotte, Geoff Johns, Brad Meltzer, Dan DiDio, Jimmy Palmiotti and Jason Badower, I went to the message boards at Comic Book Resources to announce my latest project in the works, The Black Tower, in 2007, and to inform my fellow comic book geeks that I was in need of an artist who would be available to draw & colour at least the first two or three issues (of a planned 36) for $17,000, per issue.

Well, the venomous, hateful and misogynistic remarks I got in the comments section below my post, hours later, were just so shocking and unbelievably hurtful. These were my fellow comic book lovers and sci-fi/fantasy geeks, telling me to "Fuck off, loser!", "Chicks can't write comics!", "Why don't you go back to washing the dishes, bitch? No one wants to work on your stupid Black Dildo."

The most hurtful comments came from comic book veteran, Jim Valentino, whose remarks were so patronizing and condescending I felt as though he'd assumed I was just some stupid, misguided teenager instead of a highly accomplished writer – which he would have discovered if he'd just spent 10 seconds Googling my name.

I was so angry, I tore into him on the message boards, and after a heated debate between he and I about the inclusion and respectful acceptance of women in the comic book industry (which was read by hundreds of people), he retracted his clueless and ignorant statements, wished me luck on The Black Tower – and deleted the entire thread on Comic Book Resources, so, he didn't look like a misogynistic prick, online, for all eternity (Google has a long memory).

I love comics! My favorite characters are Batman, Venom, Jean Gray/Phoenix, Spider-Man, Spawn, Wonder Woman and so many others I won't take the time to list here. I'm also fully qualified to write comics, the proof being the 100,000+ readers and fans of my work from all over the world, including writers for Buffy, Angel, Lost, Heroes, Star Trek, X-Files, Smallville, Supernatural, Stargate: SG1 and Battlestar Galactica.

OK...I got that off my chest. Now, if you don't mind, I have a sink full of dishes to get to.

KJC